


walk out of the cosmic fog into a new life among the stars!

by Nemonus



Category: Vide Noir - Lord Huron (Album)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Fantasy Drug Use, Past Relationship(s), Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 22:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17010222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: He walked out of the ocean at night, wringing silver-edged salt water out of his hat.





	walk out of the cosmic fog into a new life among the stars!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



> Thanks for such a cool request! I had a blast channeling all that atmosphere into something resembling a narrative. Writing this was basically like daydreaming during an album rather than attempting to explain very much, so hopefully it works both as a stab toward world-building and a baffling journey akin to the album itself. 
> 
> For an optimal experience, let the two videos play in the background as you come to them.

_Have a look._ He walked out of the ocean at night, wringing silver-edged salt water out of his hat. John Doe, he called himself, because he could remember facts but not names, and the old pseudonym of the missing was a fact. John Doe turned around and did many things simultaneously: dragged a foot in the sand to finish the turn, gave the brim of the hat a particularly contentious wring, and checked that the night sky was as riotous as it had ever been.

Every star winked clearly in the black sky. Out from the silver-and-bronze sweep of the galaxy they piled over one another, brighter than they should have been while the light of the city faced them across the sea. Instead of dimming under the red and gold flashes of boardwalk ads, the stars and the water made bright green light between them, maybe stars and maybe algae, but something living, sure, something vital and kicking.

This glance at the light roused the man who reluctantly called himself John Doe. Where before the expression on his face had been melancholy it now brightened, became a sly, indulgent smile. To an observer on the boardwalk — there were not many, but a few — he would seem comfortable in that smile, and in his baggy blue jeans and in the wide-brimmed felt hat. Had he been waterlogged when he walked out of the water? Maybe, or maybe the darkness of his clothing simply made it look like he had been. Either way he was dry now, if a bit dirty— when he scratched at the stubble on his face he left a trail of sand and shards of white shells.

He ambled to the boardwalk, leaving sandy wet footprints behind. As he walked he kept looking from the foggy green stars to the autumn-orange signs and back, distracted, as if his thoughts fled from one place to another. He paid special attention to the gaps between boards, sometimes, the blacker strips. Nevertheless he did not shake or stumble, instead maintaining an aura of coiled composure.

The boardwalk had been there a long time, through the booms and busts of the coastal town, and some of the paint was peeling but most of the old murals had moved on from decrepit to carefully-tended antique. John walked through it with indifference, neither spring nor slouch. The shops open at this midnight hour were the bars and the fortune teller’s. John made his way toward the latter, his uneven focus resting longer on the guttering neon green pine tree sign and the gaudy pink third-eye fixture.

Another man stood at the doors to the saloon. John met his eyes just long enough to see that, no, his eyes were not deep-set, but completely black where they should have had white edges. John knew this man would offer him nothing, tempt him with nothing. They didn’t serve the thing that had blackened his sclerae behind the bar. Just wander on, John. Find a deadly dance at a different bar this time.

John looked past the man, over the double doors, and saw someone at a poker game slip a poison-green bottle into the pocket of her mint flannel shirt.

Sorry, John. That jogged your memory.

She said ///////

/////// pᴉɐs ǝɥS

[ǝƃpǝ ǝɥʇ ʇsɐd ʇno ǝɹ,noʎ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbjMDgMz504)

_And how are we supposed to speak of this? My tongue couldn’t shape those words when I walked on the boardwalk the first time. If I’d known that by the time I walked here again my teeth would shift in my mouth, I wouldn’t have visited the edge of the void so eagerly. There are gaps where teeth should be, even though all of my teeth are present and whole._

_Dance across the edge into the dark, said the sky. Somewhere beyond it blinked the eyes of the Emerald Star, leaving a rotten taste on my tongue and an ache like love in my belly. We all have to choose one, right? Choose the thing that makes you tap your foot, the view that makes you feel like the whole vista’s in your reach. You just had the bad luck and desperation and orneriness to choose the_ endless void—

You hear [a sound that goes on forever](http://www.yellowstone.co/webcams.htm), or has never begun. Anxiety beats in your head like a drum: _something’s coming. Those stars are gonna fall. The boardwalk plays over and over like a record. Something’s on it’s way, and it already has you, and you’re here again. Who are you? The John reading this or the John who remembers or someone else?_

Someone with [flame-hot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4UERykRbg) hands pulls you toward them. You blink and apologize and

It’s the fortune teller. A lace-brimmed gray hat does not quite hide her neatly pinned, slightly dusty blonde hair.

“Sorry, ma’am,” you say. “I must’ve gotten lost.”

“You sure have.” Her voice is deep and certain, and it drawls a little bit, like yours. It echoes a little bit, too, unlike yours. “Are you looking for some answers? If not, I’m happy to let you go your way. But if so, I have a shop might be more hospitable than that bar.”

Her hands aren’t really as hot as all that. You were just cold from the night space beyond the ocean, and now that you realize that you want to stick your hands under your armpits to try to take some of your own warmth. You resist the urge to do this or to look back at the bar, and concentrating on only those two things allows you to walk into the shop and sit down on the metal stool.

It’s hardly a shop, more of a concrete trailer. There are pink pillows and pale yellow curtains, and sigils both familiar and strange. A whole pine branch tipped into the corner hides scaled cones under thick needles.

She sits on the opposite side of the round table, then scoots her chair around closer as if you aren’t quite a customer. The silence is awkward after the creak of the chair stops screaming. You play with your sleeves, gradually realizing (although your awareness of your own body is very bad, if that was not already apparent) that you’re gradually warming to something resembling comfortable.

“After everything you’ve seen, you’d go back again?” The fortune teller asks.

You aren’t sure you can choose.

You say yes.

“You know it’ll all end up the same,” she says.

“I know.”

“I can make it easier. You know that already too. But it’ll mean forgetting some.”

You ball your fist on your knee. “I won’t forget her.”

“No, she won’t let you. But some other things?”

“I have to know,” you say.

She laughs. “There it is.”

“Right,” you sigh, tired of being told over and over again the thing that is already certain.

“So go. As I cast you out, so you will try to cast out the things that haunt you. Be careful.”

She says your name.

It isn’t John.

You stare into the pine for a little while while she putters around. You aren’t making a decision; you’ve done that already. You’re just remembering what it was like to be safe, predictable, bored. Your back aches, but there’s a lightheadedness coming that means the world is going to fall away and dazzle you.

“Thank you,” you mutter on your way out.

As soon as you cross the threshold, you feel the slight pull and breaking pop of a film across the world.

It all ///////

˙uᴉ ɹǝɹǝpuɐʍ ǝɥʇ slloɹ ǝpᴉʇ ǝɥʇ 'sǝɯᴉʇǝɯoS ˙llɐ s,ʇɐɥʇ 'ɯǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ sǝɔɐɟɹns ǝɥ sǝɯᴉʇǝɯoS ˙sǝᴉɹoɯǝɯ ǝsoɥʇ uᴉ ʞɔɐq llɐ ǝɹ,ʎǝɥʇ 'ʞɹɐp ǝɥʇ uᴉ pɐoɹ ƃuol ǝɥʇ 'sɹǝɹǝlloɥ ɔᴉɯsoɔ ǝɥ┴ ˙uɥoſ 'ollǝH ˙ɹǝʇɐʍ ǝʞᴉl sǝlddᴉɹ  ///////

Once on the flat, wet sand near the waves he pulled the pine kindling from the brim of his hat and began to draw the circle on the sand. It would take a long time to write all of the names around the edges, to conjure every memory he had of the woman he had hardly known. Half of the names were different every time, he thought, but could not quite remember whether that was true.

Sometimes he reached into his pocket for a flip phone or a drivers’ license, but he found only air. The nature of these objects were facts, so he could remember them. Sometimes he reached to his collar for a locket that had never been there, for the picture of a woman he had barely known. Of course he had replaced her with a whole sky he barely knew either. The woman from kansastexasoregon would not recognize the eyes of the Emerald Star. The only thing about them that was the same was the ache.

He had imagined her enough for her to be almost real, here. Go on, John. Imagine. Imagine dancing with her,his mouth by her ear. Imagine cupping her shoulder in passing, the casual touch all the more important for being casual. Imagine her feet scuffing the edges of the circle as both of them dance. Imagine letting that Emerald Star in, so that it can also dance.

There it is, John. He/you can come back to me now.

Once he looked up, concentration slipping, and saw someone on the boardwalk jump up with both feet. A light flickered off, and he never saw whether they came down.


End file.
